There’s no dispute among NBA players about who the brawniest member of the league is.
Strength comes in many forms and has many sources. But what does it mean to be strong? We have a few ideas. Check back throughout the week for more.
On one particularly frigid day in Oklahoma City in December 2019, then Thunder center Steven Adams, rocking his trademark post-practice, pre-anything flip-flops,
asked me whether I’d ever heard of the sport kabaddi, which he loved.
“It’s awesome, mate. It’s like the best thing you guys do.”
Adams, who was ostensibly chatting with me for a story I was writing on his then teammate Chris Paul, began excitedly explaining to me the Indian sport, which he
essentially summed up as both dangerous and violent. A quick YouTube search confirmed his description. To the untrained eye, kabaddi—a sport that certainly involves strategy, athleticism and intelligence—basically looks like a group of five or
six people trying to tackle, maul, scratch and claw a single opponent.
And if it paid tens of millions of dollars a year, the Grizzlies center may have never stepped foot on an NBA court.
Justin Ford/Getty Images
Adams is the unquestioned strongest player in the NBA. In fact, those are the words
of a fellow player. As Heat forward Duncan Robinson described on his podcast, Adams’s strength is largely a source of agreement around the league.
“There’s a unanimous No. 1. That’s Steven Adams,” Robinson said when asked about the strongest players in the sport. “He is massive. Incredibly strong and knows it. And he’s a terror, particularly on the offensive glass.”
Adams is not afraid to flaunt his strength, either. Robinson said in the same
podcast episode that whenever he’s standing next to Adams during a free
throw, the big man will squeeze his bicep, a wordless way of asking his opponent whether he’ll be strong enough to box him out. As Robinson explained it, it’s like
having an “iron claw” wrapped around your arm. (Adams, by the way, puts his money
where his muscle is: He averaged 4.6 offensive rebounds a game during the regular season, tops in the NBA.)
Robinson’s story is somehow not even the best illustration of Adams’s strength involving the free throw line. Some players may run a lap if they miss in practice. Others will consign themselves to shooting an extra 20 shots to make up for a miss. Not Adams—in 2016, he told reporters as a way to improve his struggles at the foul line, an assistant coach would punch him in the stomach every time he missed during practice. (It would be fair to question the effectiveness of the method. Adams shot only 54.3% from the free throw line in ’22.)
Read More From SI’s Strength Issue
Where Adams’s strength particularly shines on the court is in his ability to set bone-crushing screens. Small guards who aren’t in constant communication with their teammates can quickly find themselves facedown on the hardwood. “He’s one of the best screeners in the league. He’s such a great teammate,” JJ Redick said on a podcast to Grizzlies sharpshooter Desmond Bane. “Playing with a guy that’s a great screener like that is a shooter’s dream,” Bane said.
Or as Jimmy Butler put it after a T-Wolves-Thunder game in 2018, “That motherf---er is strong. I’m serious. He hit me with one screen today. I thought my life was over. He’s like from Krypton or something.”
Adams’s strength has created off-court myths, too. According to former teammate Kendrick Perkins, one of Adams’s offseason activities is hunting for wild hogs with nothing but a knife. Adams, happy to play along with this caricature, has growled at opponents about his love for tearing his dinner apart with his hands.
Though Adams admittedly loves getting under the skin of friends and opponents alike, he generally uses his powers for good. Genial and easygoing, he can annoy players on the court, but he’s never the type to hand out cheap shots. In December 2018, he famously helped an airborne Mason Plumlee avoid a hard fall instead of attempting a layup. This season he literally picked up and moved Bulls center Tony Bradley like a box to prevent a brewing altercation with Ja Morant.
Whether he’s hunting with only a knife, studying kabaddi film or playing in an NBA
game, Adams is almost certainly going to be the strongest person in any room he’s in. And if the rules and objectives of basketball were different, who knows what we might be able to see him do.
Read more Strength Issue stories:
• Who’s Still Got Milk?
• A Strongman Rethinks What It Means to Be Strong
• The Reinvention of Yama, the World’s Heaviest Sumo Wrestler